Philosophical Views on Freedom Flashcards
The liberty to accomplish an action without interference or obstacles. You have the physical ability to get something done.
Circumstantial Freedom
The power to choose among “genuine alternatives”, which is acting independently of prior causal factors.
Metaphysical Freedom
A philosophical view that believes every event in the world is brought about by underlying causes or factors.
Determinism
It asserts that man may have circumstantial freedom, but he does not have metaphysical freedom.
Determinism
It asserts that man’s path is predetermined. We’re just at the mercy of physical impulses or events that have already occurred.
Determinism
Believes that human actions are freely chosen. It asserts that we do have metaphysical freedom; we are morally responsible. We aren’t just puppets dangling from a string, nor are we subject to some predetermined path. We’ve got the capacity and intellect to choose between options.
Libertarianism (Indeterminism)
Believes that free will and determinism are compatible ideas and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent. We are determined and we have moral responsibility. Circumstantial freedom is all we need to be morally responsible.
Compatibilism
A philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the person as a free and responsible agent determining their development through acts of the will.
Existentialism
The “Father of Existentialism”.
Søren Kierkegaard
Explains anxiety as the dizzying effect of freedom, of paralyzing possibility, and of the boundlessness of one’s existence; a kind of existential “paradox of choice”.
Søren Kierkegaard
- Immersion in sensuous experience. Its physical and external standards serve as the basis and it’s an attraction to the beautiful. Its characteristics include empty-headedness and extravagant expectations.
Aesthetic Stage
- Consciousness in terms of the moral aspects of life. An individual tries to discern whether his action is good or bad.
Ethical Stage
3.The last stage; the individual seeks for a supreme being. Freedom is authentic if it is lived in consciousness with the supreme being.
Theological Stage
Rejected the sufficiency of the idea of being born Christian; Christianity is a commitment which most of the mob of “Christendom” do not possess.
Kierkegaard’s Christianity
More famous through his works in psychology. He is known for his “Operant Conditioning”. He also contributed in the question of freedom, which for him, “human freedom is nothing but an illusion.”
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
For skinner, Man is not free because;
- All present behavior is controlled by previous behavior.
- All behavior has motivational causes which are necessitating causes.
Increasing the probability of behavior.
Reinforcement
Decreasing the probability of behavior
Punishment
His position seems to be one of absolute indeterminism or total freedom. He believed that man has no historicity. All man has are future possibilities, the possession of which he absolutely holds. He is not defined and determined; he defines and determines himself. Man is unconditionally free because freedom “exists as it is”
Jean-Paul Sartre
Freedom is about making a choice and by choosing freedom, the person is asserting his existence and his freedom. He asserts that “existence is not a necessity”; to exist is simply to be there, no necessary being can explain existence; everything gratuitous (free).
Jean-Paul Sartre
In his view, the barriers to freedom will only become a hindrance if the human person chooses to accept it as a hindrance to his freedom. In his concept, freedom is not the freedom to just do something or anything, saying that “you are free,” because the person always has a choice; freedom is the capacity to choose.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Denied that he himself is an existentialist.
Albert Camus
Focused on the “absurd”, the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning of life and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless, or chaotic and irrational universe.
Albert Camus
What we need is a “metaphysical rebellion”, where “the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus
